University of Kentucky

VP of Digital Marketing Performance at Louder Than Digital

* Work closely with the company’s founder/CEO to develop comprehensive digital marketing and sales enablement strategies that align with clients’ quarterly and yearly business objectives; develop and maintain C-level and executive-level relationships with customers to ensure high levels of client satisfaction and retention.

* Collaborate with the founder/CEO to identify opportunities for the business, ranging from sales, customer retention, and monthly recurring revenue to client management and evaluating resource needs. Develop plans that scale and are congruent with the firm's MRR.

* Lead the digital marketing strategy and delivery for the agency’s biggest clients.

* Lead the development and planning of the delivery team.

* Led digital strategy audit and implementation for revamped web presence of Enterprise-level client in the highly regulated financial services and products industry. Enhancements contributed to the client nearly doubling its market share YoY to 5%.

Louder Than Digital

VP, Digital Marketing Strategy

• Align digital marketing strategy and tactics to executives' goals in order to generate outcomes that matter.

• Collaborate with marketing agencies and in-house teams to conduct technical digital strategy audits for clients that range from eCommerce merchandising and apparel to business services. 

• Audit and lead UX implementations that improved site-wide conversion rate by 150% for lead generation, business services client; tripled conversion rate on the company’s most valuable conversion page, which now converts at nearly 5%. 

• 3X digital lead volume through SEO audit and implementations, managing paid media, and guiding UX strategy; the growth in lead volume allowed the sales team to meet stretch goals for qualified leads in their funnel.

• Advise in-house personnel and external partners on SEO strategies, prioritization, and implementation for key accounts. 

• Audited eCommerce website in health products sector and rolled out implementations that led to the Client's most successful quarter in sales from organic search to date (and traffic).

Self-Employed

Digital Marketing Consultant and SEO Advisor

• Reported directly to the company’s Founder/CEO and directed the content strategy for FlexJobs’ digital properties, which include a B2C subscription product and a B2B SaaS offering. Align core site and article content strategy to company initiatives related to customer acquisition and subscriber retention in order to increase ARR.

• Developed quarterly goals (OKRs—objectives and key results) alongside other members of the company’s leadership team to ensure that desired outcomes point towards both short-term and long-term company goals. 

• Grew conversions from SEO channel by more than 95% during Q1 and Q2 of 2020 versus 2019; organic traffic reached more than 4.2 million unique pageviews during this time. 

• Led a team of five fully remote direct reports internally and four freelancers externally. 

• Collaborated cross-functionally with Product Design team to run user engagement tests on A/B testing platforms like HotJar. 

• Generated 10,000 MQL leads through downloadable content. Enroll leads into email nurturing and converted leads to product subscribers at 5.5%.

• Championed a content audit of more than 5,500 articles that includes refreshing and re-optimizing high performing content based on SEO traffic and organic search positions, multi-channel performance, and conversions; redirecting content with overlapping themes; and removing lagging content from the library. 

• Grew FlexJobs' website to an Alexa Rank in the top 7,500 worldwide the top 2,000 within the US. Alexa Rank measures a website’s popularity based on traffic and user engagement.

• Interviewed and hired team personnel; conduct personalized, 1-1 digital marketing and SEO training with all internal reports to create a consistent foundational knowledge across the team. 

• Utilized database information and produce unique content for the PR team that can be pitched to the press. Articles were placed in NPR, Fox Business, CNBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and more.

FlexJobs

Senior Manager - Content Strategy

• Responsible for all digital lead generation across QSR’s product line. Channels range from inbound marketing and SEM/PPC to online media buy and retargeting. Utilize HubSpot and Salesforce to track leads and measure revenue opportunities from digital mediums, which topped $4 million from Jan. 2017 to Jan. 2018. 
• Manage and guide the department’s content strategy and content team, which includes two content specialists and a freelance developer. Develop training plans and provide constructive feedback to help grow team’s knowledge base and skill set. 
• Responsible for launching a digital marketing strategy in the United Kingdom as part of global growth initiative.  
• Serve as the webmaster and website owner. 
• Responsible for yearly digital marketing budget of more than $320,000. 
• Drove over a 175% increase in year-over-year organic traffic (users) during Q4 2018. 
• Boosts blog subscriber volume from 150 to 1,500 in 12 months. 
• Successfully rolled out Teamwork Project Manager to establish new processes for content team by locating bottlenecks.  
• Strategize automated campaigns based on lead score to target audiences at different stages of the purchasing funnel. 
• Selected to company’s culture committee by managing director.

QSR Automations

Content & Digital Marketing Manager

• Audited company’s web properties and outlined the SEO & content strategy for multiple migrations and a total overhaul in the existing site structure and folder structure of the main QSR Automations website. The 6-month project migrated niche product sites onto the main QSR site, and moved the site to the WordPress CMS from hard code.
 
• Collaborated with Senior Designer to develop information architecture and content strategy, with heavy emphasis on the user journey and conversion optimization. We also outlined the blog’s design and visual messaging.
  
• Inherited PPC/SEM efforts from NYC-based agency beginning in January 2017. Heavily revamped account set up, resulting in YOY changes that include a 20% decrease in CPA, 130% increase in CTR, and 42% decrease in CPC.
 
• Launched digital lead generation for 7 products. 
 
• Implemented Crazy Egg to track user engagement and locate areas for improvement. Used data to make informed decisions that guide the website’s UX.
 
• Launched a product review campaign on the third-party software review site Capterra to help grow brand awareness on a trusted platform.

Digital Marketing Manager

• Direct content strategy for clientele base of higher education institutions, both nonprofit and private. 
• Drove a 65% year-over-year increase in organic leads for a large legacy client during a historically slow period. 
• Successfully contributed to a team whose portfolio of clients experienced a 41% year-over-year increase in organic lead volume during Q1 and Q2 of 2016.
• Lead training sessions and update meetings with content strategists and interns; provide constructive feedback where applicable. 
• Guide monthly outreach efforts by selecting team’s focus vertical and sending department-wide report that includes notable placements, high-performing content, and link summaries. 
• Manage monthly expense sheet by tracking content promotion campaigns. Yearly budget exceeds $100,000.
• Developed template for monthly client report that measures month-over-month performance in organic, referral, and direct traffic, as well as publishing for both longform and shortform content. 
• Collaborate with project coordinator to ensure that team’s workflow is manageable and client deadlines are met.

Wiley

Senior Content Strategist

•	Brainstorm content topics with consideration to inbound marketing best practices, keyword research, and content gap analysis.  
•	Generate reports in Google Analytics to measure inbound performance and pinpoint strengths and weaknesses.  
•	Grow the brand reach of clients by designing successful outreach campaigns that gain backlinks and social shares. Earned placements include Mashable, Huffington Post, and HubSpot. Furthermore, a global outreach campaign for an interactive technology infographic reached users in more than 100 countries. 
•	Use Google Search Console and Majestic to provide insights into SEO performance by analyzing website crawl data, ranking position, click through rate, as well as backlinks. 
•	Optimize and publish content using WordPress with strong emphasis on mobile compatibility, UX, and search visibility. 
•	Use data from reports to create A/B tests that optimize for engagement and conversions, among other things.   
•	Manage projects by tracking work through internal and external processes on Teamwork Project Manager.

Content Strategist

• Edited and proofed corporate and client marketing content for clarity as well as its alignment to Web writing guidelines.  
• Conformed content to brand identity by using appropriate voice, tonality, and message. 
• Demonstrated flexibility by taking on new projects and responsibilities with short notice. 
• Led the editing team in 2013 with the most pages edited and proofed. 
• Collaborated with managing editor and other team members to develop company style guide. 
• Used Teamwork Project Manager to effectively balance multiple tasks while meeting strict client deadlines.

Copy Editor

• Edited and proofed articles for the Journal of AHIMA, a healthcare and health information technology journal with a circulation of 64,000 members and subscribers. 
• Wrote and edited article summaries for e-newsletters, e-alerts and the journal website. 
• Researched topics and pitched articles to magazine’s news team.

AHIMA

Interim Assistant Editor

• Wrote and edited profiles on entrepreneurs in the Lexington area for the Awesome Inc. website.

Awesome Inc.

Content Management Associate

• Researched and reported campus social activities.

Kentucky Kernel

Contributing Writer and Editor

• Served as a liaison between University of Kentucky athletics and the local, state and national media to ensure the best coverage of UK and SEC varsity sports.

Garrett Bonistalli